“I suppose that is acceptable,” she says after a moment. She pulls the silver lighter from her coat pocket and tosses it to him.
It is heavier than he had expected, a complicated mechanism of gears partially encased in worn and tarnished silver, with symbols he cannot distinguish etched into the surface.
“Be careful with that,” Tsukiko says.
“Is it magic?” Bailey asks, turning it over in his hand.
“No, but it is old, and it was constructed by someone very dear to me. I take it you are attempting to light that again?” She gestures at the towering bowl of twisted metal that once held the bonfire.
Bailey nods.
“Do you want any help?”
“Are you offering?”
Tsukiko shrugs.
“I am not terribly invested in the outcome,” she says, but something about the way she looks around at the tents and the mud makes Bailey doubt her words.
“I don’t believe you,” he says. “But I am, and I think I should do this on my own.”
Tsukiko smiles at him, the first smile he has seen from her that seems genuine.
“I shall leave you to it, then,” she says. She runs a hand along the iron cauldron and most of the rainwater within it turns to steam, rising in a soft cloud that dissipates into the fog.
With no further advice or instruction she walks off down a black-and-white striped path, a thin curl of smoke trailing behind her, leaving Bailey alone in the courtyard.
He remembers Widget telling him the story of the lighting of the bonfire, the first lighting. Though he only now realizes that it was also the night that Widget was born. He had told the story in such detail that Bailey assumed he had witnessed it firsthand. The archers, the colors, the spectacle.
And now here Bailey stands, trying to accomplish the same feat with only a book and some yarn and a borrowed cigarette lighter. Alone. In the rain.
He mumbles to himself what he can remember of Celia’s instructions, the ones that are more complicated than finding books and tying strings. Things about focus and intent that he does not entirely understand.
He wraps the book with a length of fine wool yarn dyed a deep crimson, bits of it stained darker with something dried and brown.
He knots it three times, binding the book closed with the loose page against the cover, the cards securely pressed inside.
The pocket watch he hangs around it, looping the chain as best he can.
He throws it in the empty cauldron where it lands with a dull wet thud, the watch clattering against the metal.
Marco’s bowler hat sits in the mud by his feet. He throws that in as well.
He glances back in the direction of the acrobat tent, he can see the top of it from the courtyard, rising taller than the surrounding tents.
And then, impulsively, he takes out the remaining contents of his pockets and adds them to the collection in the cauldron. His silver ticket. The dried rose that he had worn in his lapel at dinner with the rêveurs. Poppet’s white glove.
He hesitates, turning the tiny glass bottle with Widget’s version of his tree trapped inside over in his hand, but then he adds it as well, flinching as it shatters against the iron.
He takes the single white candle in one hand and Tsukiko’s lighter in the other.
He fumbles with the lighter before it consents to spark.
Then he ignites the candle with the bright orange flame.
He throws the burning candle into the cauldron.
Nothing happens.